Episode 151 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 07 - "The New School In Athens"

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In Chapter 5 DeWitt notes that many of the earliest images of Jesus portray him beardless, which you can see in some of those in this link. There are others as well which you can find easily by searching. DeWitt then makes the claim that Jesus began to be depicted with a beard at about the time when Epicureanism was declining and Christianity was permeating the culture.

I had commented on this very topic quite some time ago when I was sharing my thoughts on DeWitt's book. Here's the pertinent excerpt from that earlier post:

p.101 of Epicurus and his Philosophy has:

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There is, however, still something to be added. During the first three centuries of Christianity the representations of Christ exhibit a youthful and beardless face, not unlike that of Apollo. The bearded portraits began to appear at a later date and simultaneously with the absorption of the Epicurean sect into the Christian environment. These new pictures of Christ exhibit a similarity to those of Epicurus, then growing obsolete. This similarity is such as to be manifest to the most disinterested observer.

No, I don't buy this, and it's not "manifest to the most disinterested observer." For one glaring difference, the earliest "portraits" of a bearded Jesus have very long hair. The Wikipedia article on the depiction of Jesus shows one of the earliest bearded images from the late 4th century. The long flowing locks are quite visible. That's not Epicurus. The article does a fairly good job of outlining the various theories of where this bearded depiction comes from, and it's not copies of Epicurus. The references in that article, too, also point to numerous options for where the bearded depiction comes from.

Under the second heading of Chapter 6, we get an interesting look at the meditative practice of "touring the cosmos" in thought. I've collected several quotations that express the sentiment, and finally a passage from Horace contrasting the limitless ambitions of the mind with the brief span of human life.

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A Greek it was who first opposing dared

Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,

Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke

Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky

Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest

His dauntless heart to be the first to rend

The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.

And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;

And forward thus he fared afar, beyond

The flaming ramparts of the world, until

He wandered the unmeasurable All.

-Lucretius, translated by William Ellery Leonard

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Therefore superstition is now in her turn cast down and trampled underfoot, whilst we by the victory are exalted high as heaven.

--Lucretius, from the Loeb Classical Library

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Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

- Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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"You who measured the sea, the earth, and the numberless sands,

You, Archytas, are now confined in a small mound of dirt

Near the Matine shore, and what good does it do you that you

Attempted the mansions of the skies and that you traversed

The round celestial vault — you with a soul born to die?"

—Horace, Odes I.28; transl. Peter Saint-Andre

This is the Horace who has abandoned his earlier Epicureanism in favor of a piety more palatable to the new Emperor's of Rome. In Ode 1.34 we catch the repudiation by reference to Lucretius, who in book 6 around line 140 maintained that "Jupiter's" thunder was never heard when the skies were clear.

Horace;

Once I wandered, an expert in crazy wisdom, a scant and infrequent adorer of gods, now I’m forced to set sail and return, to go back to the paths I abandoned. For Jupiter, Father of all of the gods, who generally splits the clouds with his lightning, flashing away, drove thundering horses, and his swift chariot, through the clear sky, till the dull earth, and the wandering rivers, and Styx, and dread Taenarus’ hateful headland, and Atlas’s mountain-summits shook. The god has the power to replace the highest with the lowest, bring down the famous, and raise the obscure to the heights. And greedy Fortune with her shrill whirring, carries away the crown and delights in setting it, there.

--Translated by A. S. Kline

Yes, Don, that was my response as well. They also show Jesus' hair parting very differently, and long individual strands in place of Epicurus' undifferentiated locks on both head and beard.

But it is interesting to see early portraits of Jesus without a beard. Of the early Emperors, Nero had a beard. This went out of fashion again until Hadrian, who "brought back the beard", you might say. Between Hadrian and the Crisis of the Third Century, the only Emperors portrayed beardless were boys and young men, all murdered by the age of 26.

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According to art historian Paul Zanker, the bearded type has long hair from the start, and a relatively long beard (contrasting with the short "classical" beard and hair always given to St Peter, and most other apostles);[39] this depiction is specifically associated with "Charismatic" philosophers like Euphrates the Stoic, Dio of Prusa and Apollonius of Tyana, some of whom were claimed to perform miracles.

-from the Wikipedia article cited by Don above

Euphrates the stoic:

https://alchetron.com/cdn/euphrates-the-stoic-7d4399af-bf1b-41bc-bf86-718f14ad022-resize-750.jpg

Apollonius of Tyana:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQLcwBpVwmTz4Rvc8_viQ47qPQ6UrUAHpgjHA&usqp=CAU

The question of what the Garden was actually like came up. And I found this interesting overview regarding gardens in ancient Greece:

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In the city states (poleis) which developed in Greece during the early part of the first millennium BC, the municipal centres left space for religious ceremonies and public meetings, but the residential areas had very little green space. Sacred gardens or public sacred groves were mainly located outside the actual housing areas. According to traditional belief, sacred beings dwelt in such places – be they gods, nymphs or heroes. A sacred grove (alsos) was generally a place in open natural surroundings with a cluster of trees, a brook, a field or a grotto. It was marked by a ritual figure and mostly enclosed by a wall, so that the designated plot was called a temenos. However, unlike the Near Eastern royal gardens, it remained accessible to all. Its fundamental features were its communal religious aspect and its untamed natural character, located at the transition to civilisation. Sacred groves were thus protected against uncontrolled intervention (Thuc. 3.70.4; Callim. hymn. 6.24–60). In Athens the sacred olive trees dedicated to Athena were generally protected from being felled or dug up (Lys. 7).

Moreover, private vegetable and fruit gardens (kepoi and orchatoi) are attested for the Greek poleis at an early date. Homer (Od. 7.112ff.) describes a garden surrounded by hedges for the palace of Alcinous, the ruler of Phaeacia, where everything flourished and there was no want; it included an orchard with apples, pears, figs and olives, a vineyard and a vegetable garden, so that it was designed and irrigated without decorative plants or flowers, purely for utility (Od. 7.129). Laertes too, the father of Odysseus, lived in seclusion and cared for his garden, where fruit and olive trees, grapes and vegetables grew (Od. 24.244ff., 340ff.). In the reality of the urban residential areas of the poleis, house gardens were relatively rare. Greek houses had a courtyard or a peristyle (arcade) without gardens. Gardens were often located at the city walls, or formed a green belt around the city, near the rivers.² Here too were the garden-like graveyards, such as the Kerameikos in Athens (Fig. 7). The profession of gardener is attested as early as the fifth century BC (Athen. 9.372b–c; Theophr. hist. plant. 7.5.2). In this context Theophrastus lists a broad range of garden vegetables and seasoning plants.³

In the Athens of the late classical and Hellenistic periods, new ‘philosophers’ gardens’ were created, which provided a landscaping enrichment of the city's surroundings. These included Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum and Epicurus’ Kepos – which can be translated as ‘garden’. Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle's, had a garden near the Lyceum; his works include a comprehensive botanical study (De causis plantarum; Diog. Laert. 5.46, 51ff.). These ‘gardens of learning’ were in private hands, and could, in connection with older public institutions, provide a philosophical and athletic education. They included an assemblage of parks, shrines and sports facilities, and such buildings as gymnasia and palaestras (courts for wrestling matches) as training areas, together with pathways, statues and sacred groves, such as for the Heros Akademos, or shrines such as for Apollo Lykeios. Theophrastus’ Lyceum also had an altar for the Muses.

https://erenow.net/ancient/an-env…-and-rome/9.php

Here's an image that likely colored my earlier perceptions about Greek life, from a city-building video game my friends and I played extensively in high school.

Greek garden - Wikipedia

This page is interesting.

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Archaeologists have not identified planted courtyards within the palaces of Mycenean culture nor in Greek houses of the Classical period. When the editors of a symposium on Roman gardens[10] included a contribution on the expected Greek precursors, Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway's article prompted a reviewer[11] to observe, "For all practical purposes there appear to have been no gardens of any sort in Greek city homes, beyond perhaps a few pots with plants."

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Though Harpalus, Alexander's successor at Babylon, grew some Greek plants in the royal palace and walks,[20] mainland Greece, mother of democracy and Western cultural traditions, was not the mother of European gardens.

This is interesting stuff. It might explain why Greek Historians like Herodotus remarked on the lavish gardens they found in their travels, if the practice was not widespread at home. It also reinforces the power of the pastoral ideal of the Greek countryside, where pasture, vineyard, and grove dominate the poetic landscape.

Kalosyni and Joshua inspired me to poke around, too. Found this one:

Kepos: Garden Spaces in Ancient Greece: Imagination and Reality

A number of images have been removed from the electronic copy of this thesis for copyright reasons. A list of the removed images is available below.

www.academia.edu

Note: Only 1 mention of "Epicurean" but remember that The Garden was just outside the Dipylon Gate in the Kerameikos district... And lots on that!

The sage will be fond of the countryside, enjoying being outside the towns and cities. (120)

Hicks: He will be fond of the country.

Yonge: He will like being in the country,

I think it's wonderful that this characteristic is a single word in the original: φιλαγρήσειν (philagrēsein) "They will love the ἀγρός" "fields, land, country as opposed to the town."

Note: This is the same construction that gives us φιλοσοφία (philosophia "philosophy") and φιλάνθρωπος (philanthrōpos "philanthropy").

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀγρός

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Φ φ, , φι^δ-ίτι^ον , φι^λαγρ-έω

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Φ φ, , φι^δ-ίτι^ον , φίλαγρ-ος

Also used in Lucian

Lucian, Lexiphanes, section 3

οἶσθα δ᾽ ὡς φίλαγρός εἰμι. "You know how I dote on the country!"

PS. Turns out there is a word for "loving one's country/city-state, patriotic" Φιλόπολις (philopolis)

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Φ φ, , φι^λοπευστ-έω , φι^λόπολις

On Leontion, see Diogenes Laertius Book X:

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Metrodorus,34 the son of Athenaeus (or of Timocrates) and of Sande, a citizen of Lampsacus, who from his first acquaintance with Epicurus never left him except once for six months spent on a visit to his native place, from which he returned to him again. [23] His goodness was proved in all ways, as Epicurus testifies in the introductions35 to his works and in the third book of the Timocrates. Such he was : he gave his sister Batis to Idomeneus to wife, and himself took Leontion the Athenian courtesan as his concubine.

The daughter of Leontion/Leontium:

Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, Book XIII., chapter 64

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And Sophron the governor of Ephesus had a mistress, Danae, the daughter of Leontium the Epicurean, who was also a courtesan herself. And by her means he was saved when a plot was laid against him by Laodice, and Laodice was thrown [p. 947] down a precipice, as Phylarchus relates in his twelfth book in these words: “Danae was a chosen companion of Laodice, and was trusted by her with all her secrets; and, being the daughter of that Leontium who had studied with Epicurus the natural philosopher, and having been herself formerly the mistress of Sophron, she, perceiving that Laodice was laying a plot to murder Sophron, revealed the plot to Sophron by a sign. And he, understanding the sign, and pretending to agree to what she was saying to him, asked two days to deliberate on what he should do. And, when she had agreed to that, he fled away by night to Ephesus. But Laodice, when she learnt what had been done by Danae, threw her down a precipice, discarding all recollection of their former friendship. And they say that Danae, when she perceived the danger which was impending over her, was interrogated by Laodice, and refused to give her any answer; but, when she was dragged to the precipice, then she said, that “many people justly despise the Deity, and they may justify themselves by my case, who having saved a man who was to me as my husband, am requited in this manner by the Deity. But Laodice, who murdered her husband, is thought worthy of such honour.”

Quote from from Epicurus's will

"And let Amynomachus and Timocrates take care of Epicurus, the son of Metrodorus, and of the son of Polyaenus, so long as they study and live with Hermarchus. Let them likewise provide for the maintenance of Metrodorus's daughter,32 so long as she is well-ordered and obedient to Hermarchus; and, when she comes of age, give her in marriage to a husband selected by Hermarchus from among the members of the School

It's intriguing to consider if Danae is a daughter of Metrodorus and Leontion, or whether Danae is a daughter of Leontion from after Metrodorus died, or whether Danae is the daughter referenced in Epicurus's Will and she didn't like who Amynomachus and Timocrates were going to marry her off to so she ran away with her dowry to Sophron, the governor of Ephesus. So many possible storylines!